With his poems, essays, memoirs, journalism, and advocacy, Kenny Fries has been in the vanguard of disability literature for over forty years. From considerations of Darwin and social Darwinism to the flinty and dismissive corridors of American medicine, Fries shows us how disability, embodiment, queerness, curiosity, and contrarianism can push us toward hope. With Returns: Poems Selected and New, the power of his lyricism reminds us why poetry truly matters. This is an important book by a poet at the height of his craft.
Sanni Purhonen’s poems deal with embodiment, feminism, disability rights, and taking on the social constructions of normalcy. If Only I’d Turn into Someone Else doesn’t offer stylized and easy outlets for the effects of ableism. There’s no post-humanist fix coming. Science has no idea how to save us. Purhonen gives us dark pictures on the water. They are true as Odysseus’s arrows.
